Consequences of poor planning for school building projects continue to dog New Bedford

It's six years since the roof collapsed at the South End peninsula's John Hannigan Elementary School, but the school building that replaces the Hannigan is going to have to last 100 years.

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Posted Aug. 5, 2012 at 12:01 AM
Updated Aug 5, 2012 at 7:06 AM

Posted Aug. 5, 2012 at 12:01 AM
Updated Aug 5, 2012 at 7:06 AM

» Social News

It's six years since the roof collapsed at the South End peninsula's John Hannigan Elementary School, but the school building that replaces the Hannigan is going to have to last 100 years.

The city of New Bedford is only going to get one shot at massive state aid as it plans the next elementary school building(s) for its peninsula neighborhoods, so it better get it right.

Mayor Jon Mitchell knows that.

As he prepares to devise a building plan with what's left of the money set aside for the disastrously expensive Keith Middle School, the mayor is well aware that this is a critical planning decision for the city.

By getting it right, the mayor means a community and child-friendly elementary school(s) where urban students can obtain the kind of facilities, environment and individual attention they need to succeed.

The peninsula school building project is the only new school left in the state in which a community will receive a 90 percent reimbursement from the state School Building Authority. That's because the days of Massachusetts being able to pick up the vast majority of school building costs are in decline.

The next schools built in New Bedford will only receive 80 percent state reimbursement and the reimbursement trend seems headed downward after that.

Schools don't get built every 30-or-so years in New Bedford the way they do in some rapidly growing suburbs. That's because there is too much building need in the city with nine still-functioning elementary schools that are in the vicinity of 100-years old.

Mitchell, who this year transferred two of his own three daughters to one of the city's best elementary schools (Winslow), strongly prefers small elementary schools. He knows what the research says about small schools in urban environments.

But the mayor also knows about the fairness issue, and that the city is currently running three inner-city schools that have enrollments of around 700-plus students. These are schools that will not be replaced for a long, long time.

Mitchell says he's further aware that the days of the state building 200-pupil elementary schools, and cities and towns being able to afford to run such small schools, are over. It's just too expensive in an era of diminishing revenues.

So Mitchell is thinking about building a school for around 400-pupils on the peninsula if he can.

The problem for the mayor is that the city has spent a lot of its 90 percent reimbursement money on the Keith Middle School cleanup. In addition, a School Building Authority agreement with Mayor Scott Lang to build a new elementary school at the Sea Lab could tie the city's hands. (Lang wanted to win state reimbursement for an $8 million ocean-science training facility that Mayor Fred Kalisz built without any state aid. So he agreed to expand Sea Lab into an elementary school.)

All of this leaves Mayor Mitchell with a complex problem: What to do about this one shot the city has to build an elementary school(s) on the peninsula when there is so much money and history tying his hands.

This whole issue is complicated by the fact that city must also replace a second peninsula school, the William H. Taylor School, built in 1898 and now the oldest still-functioning school in the city.

Mitchell, the School Committee and City Council appear to have a number of options:

1. Build an addition onto Sea Lab for a small, 200-student school that is far from the Hannigan students' own neighborhood, and place the rest of the peninsula kids in the first floor of the massive Roosevelt Middle School.

2. Build a 400-student addition onto a small Sea Lab site, a plan that, if the Hannigan kids stay there, would also house many kids in a school outside their own neighborhood.

3. Place most of the peninsula kids at the Roosevelt, where there is empty space, and give them a separate entrance from the larger numbers of middle-school students who would inevitably dwarf the younger kids on the site. This idea would probably require a second school located somewhere between the peninsula and other sections of the South End.

4. Tear down either the old Taylor or the old Hannigan school and build a second, 400-pupil school for the peninsula in addition to the 200- or 400-pupil school at Sea Lab.

By the way, in order to clean the Keith site up, the money set aside for four separate new New Bedford elementary schools ≠ Brooks, Winslow, DeValles and Campbell — had to be forever transferred to the Keith project. That's what happens when a community doesn't plan carefully for its school building projects.≠ The Keith cost escalated from around $42 million to one in which the state and city had to set aside $150 million.

Now remember, after the city devises its 100-year-school plan for the peninsula, it will still have to create plans to rebuild seven other city elementary schools that are in the vicinity of 100-years old.

Mitchell and the city are in a tough spot. And I haven't even mentioned the desirability of combining working and middle class peninsula neighborhoods in a single school setting. By the way, the Hannigan school is about 67 percent minority and the Taylor about 37 percent minority, so both schools are already well integrated.

It's not an easy problem that the mayor and the city face. But Mitchell seems determined to solve it in the most foward-looking way possible.

One thing is for sure. This peninsula building plan should take a lesson from the catastrophically expensive consequences that can happen when school building projects are not planned out carefully.

Spell that Keith Middle School.

Jack Spillane is the executive news editor of The Standard-Times and southcoasttoday.com. He can be reached at 508-979-4472 or jspillane@s-t.com